Thursday, July 28, 2011

Day 9, Creative Composers

We worked extensively in the lab conferences, revising, refining, and publishing our creative writing. There was alot of creative energy flowing in today in the Creative Composers Writing Workshop.

Camper Spotlight: Today, Julia and Alison worked on their stories that are connected to each other. Julia's character and Alison's character are best friends who attend school together.
Jennifer worked on her cat poems, who was inspired by her cat, Tyler.

Day 7, Wanna-Be Writers

We made dialogue and postcards. Also, we refreshed similes and metaphors.

Campers Spotlight: Nur shared her funny dialogue with me.

Day 7, Literacy Lab

Today we continued our Pirate Theme by writing a collaborative Class Pirate Adventure. We made pirate hats and then typed up our own Pirate Proviles. We played "pass the gold coin" ouside in the shade.


Camper's Spotlight:


Savannah's favorite camp was writing about the things she treasures most. 


Own enjoyed writing his story and the time he (as a pirate) went through a pond while on his trasure hunt adventure.

Day 7, Author Adventures

Our day began with some writing in which we used a diffferent point of view-that of a pencil. We wrote about our adventures of escaping from a pencil sharpener. Afterwards, we became poets and authored our own diamantes. Our morning finished with a few more writing pieces and then the computer lab.

Camper Spotlight:

Zachariah- "The diamante because it made me think hard."

Lucas- "I like the diamante because it is fun to draw in different shapes."

Day 7, Comedy Writers

Campers started the day by completing their original comedy sketches. Then it was practice, practice, practice! We practiced our character monologues and original comedy sketches. Characters are beginning to come alive. Please remember to practice and memorize scripts at home.

Campers Spotlight: William sang opera for us today and Ahbishek, Chloe, and Anika performed their skit which has a very demanding restaurant customer.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Day 6, Creative Composers

Today we enjoyed Writer's Circle and Author's Craft discussion.  We set writing workshop goals for developing creative writing that we started last week. 


Cijin worked on developing a strong introduction to her story about Rude Isabella by writing a character profile descriptive paragraph with lots of showing details and specific examples.  This is to help the reader imagine right at the start of the story just how rude Rude Isabella is and wonder what might happen in the story.

Day 6, Literacy Lab

Our theme today was all about pirates!


We read three cool books about pirates and learned lots of things.  We began developing a pirate adventure story, filled out a "Pirate Profile," and then made our own Treasure Map with places we really like.  


We went on a Pirate Treasure hunt, following clues throughout the campus.  We mapped our path and worked on sequencing in deciding what came first, second, third, etc.  


Camper highlights:
Pirate gold coins are Sam's favorite treasure!
Dominic's pirate's name is Captain Blue Seas!

Day 6, Robot Invasion

We enjoyed working on capture the flag program and building a new robot. 

Day 6, Comedy Writers

Wow!   What a busy day!  We were able to complete our "morning punchline" activity and watch some "So Random" skits for inspiration.  Campers will be practicing group skits and monologues all week.  Please be sure to take some time to practice at home!  


Campers are finishing up the writing of their original group sketches.  We can't wait to hear from them!


Camper spotlight:  
Gayatri is a very upset farmer and Laura is a hungry Canadian in their performance of the "The Cat."   Praneel presented his monologue as a spunky "Barney" fanatic.

Day 6, Author Adventures

We started off our Monday by reading and solving our riddles from Friday.  Some were easy, but others were very tricky!  We also started two new writing projects: an adventure story and a description of our animal/monster discoveries. 


Joy:  I like when we did the monster stories because I was creative.


Jasmine:  My favorite writing today is the monster pictures because it was like making a masterpiece!

Day 6, Wanna-Be Writers

Today we made an "I am" chart that will be shared on Friday.  We also made invitations using Wordle.  

We have a new student today, named Ghianna. Welcome!

Friday, July 22, 2011

Day 5 Creative Composers

Highlights: Today we learned about adding dialogue. The students worked in groups and created dialogue using their favorite movie characters. Of course the most popular was Harry Potter! We looked at the different ways to sue punctuation with dialogue next we learned about using senses details in our writing by closing our eyes and feeling, tasting, or smelling various items. We discussed the importance of showing the reader what it is like to be in our stories as if they are experiencing it along the way.

Camper Spotlight: Creative Composer Riki, says: I really liked the touching, smelling, and the eating lesson. I think it was interesting because it helped me put more details into my stories.

Day 5 Literacy Lab

Highlights: Today's theme was "Camping and Sharing a Story." We started the day by finishing the writing of our Ocean Facts on Sea Life Cut-outs and placed them in our classroom ocean. We wrote and drew about everything we knew about camping! We discovered that we all love to eat S'mores! Our fun collaborative game today was called "We're Going on a Bear Hunt." We listened to the song and watched the video as we all pretended to go on a class bear hunt. After going on the bear hunt, we made our own binoculars and went on a Penn State scavenger hunt! At the end of camp today, we sat around the "campfire" and shared our writings with one another.

Camper Spotlight: Braden liked making Cheetah binoculars and going on a bear hunt. Ava wrote about bats in the forest for our camping theme!

Day 5 Wanna-Be Writers

Highlights: We worked on pressing, blessing, and addressing eachothers' works for the anthology.

Camper Spotlight: We all tried to write a story with only 55 words! Wow, what a challenge that was!

Day 5 Author Adventures

Highlights: Today we practiced our descriptive writing by using our senses and writing a 5-lined poem called a cinquain. We also are preparing to trick our fellow campers through riddles.

Camper Spotlight: Teja said that her favorite part of today was writing riddles because they're hard to solve and your brain has to think a lot! Mackenzie said that she liked writing about her favorite season, winter.

Day 5 Comedy Writers

Highlights: We continue to practice our conventions every day by correcting the "Morning Punchline" jokes. Campers presented their character monologues to the group. We will be practicing all of next week to perfect our appearance movements, and voices. Finally, campers had a chance to continue brainstorming, in smaller groups, ideas for their own comedy sketches.

Camper Spotlight: Jasmine became a male character with a wonderful British accent and Haley S. turned herself into a 92-year-old granny who loves to read. Melena's character loves money and became a bank president!

Day 5 Robotics Camp

Highlights: Today we have been programming the robots we have created and have also created "funky" attachments to add on to the robot. We also had to complete the challenge that was presented to us this week, which was to have our robots following various lines.

Camper Spotlight: The campers had a great challenge racing their robot creations! It was quite the challenge to keep those robots on a straight line!

Day 4 Wanna-Be Writers

Highlights: Today we explored the world of inanimate objects. We wrote poems about our favorites and we wrote a poem about the Nittany Lion statue.

Camper Spotlight: Great Job, Lara, on your sneaker poem! It was fantastic!

Day 4 Creative Composers

Highlights: Today we continued to talk about developing characters in writing by using descriptive words, thoughts, and feelings of the characters in our fictional stories. We read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and created character trading cards. The trading cards focused on the personality and physical appearance of our characters. Some students sketched a picture of their main character, while others used Google Images to find a picture that reminded them of their character.

Camper Spotlight: (by Charlotte P.) Today we made trading cards for our characters. It helped me summarize my story. I liked how we read the The True Story of the Three Little Pigs because it helped me think about dialogue.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Day 4 Literacy Lab

Highlights: Today's theme was Ocean Explorers! We talked about fiction and non-fiction and became ocean explorers as we hunted for turtle eggs (with facts or stories) in shredded seaweed. We loved the story, Ocean Commotion, and used the facts in the book to create a classroom ocean to write our own summertime poems.


Camper Spotlight: Gia most enjoyed playing in the sand and writing a poem. Krish wrote about "wild coconuts and cold things."

Day 4 Comedy Writers

Highlights: We started our morning with our "Morning Punchline," an editing activity to practice using correct conventions. Campers had a lot of questions and great ideas about how to dress and act like their character for their monologues. Don't be surprised if they ask to bring items to use as props! Our theater game today was called "Look Up Dude;" a focusing exercise useful for getting a cast to function as a unit and for evaluating how well an ensemble is working. Finally, campers spent time typing in the computer lab and practicing, practicing, practicing their group skits and monologues!

Camper Spotlight: Lily and Haley B. were the winners of each of our two games of "Look Up Dude!" Alex and Jazzy performed their "Insurance Salesman" skit for the group. It was hilarious!

Day 4 Author Adventures

Highlights: We wrote about Bubble Adventures and started working on sensory writing. We used a chocolate kiss as our inspiration.

Camper Spotlight: Sam's favorite part of Author Adventures today was going outside adn blowing bubbles to see what it would be like to be a bubble!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Welcome!

It's official.  Camps are well underway and campus is buzzing with student writers of all ages.

Be sure to check this blog each day for a peek into the day's activities!